Grant Parker

Grant Parker (3 May 1840-22 July 1913) was a politician of the United States from the US Socialist Party. He represented Sitka, Alaska in the upper house of the US government, from 1882 to 1883.

Biography
Grant Parker was born on 3 May 1840 in Portland, Oregon, United States to an English-American family. His father George Parker was the owner of a general store in the area, and he ran for the city council in 1847. However, he lost the elections. In a bid to run for elections elsewhere, he moved to the newly-acquired Washington Territory and the family live in Seattle. Grant Parker assisted his father with his business, which left them in the lower middle class area.

Things changed after the Alaska Purchase in 1867. Grant Parker moved to Alaska, living in Sitka, a region on the southern coastline of Alaska, near British Canada. Parker became a politician there, putting up posters for the US Socialist Party. Most of the Native American laborers of Sitka were aligned with socialism, as many of the poor Native Americans across the country wanted equal rights with white men. Parker ran for election several times in the 1870s, winning seats on the city council of Sitka several times. In 1882, he ran for upper house member against the Democratic Party candidate Joseph L. Carmichael, and defeated him by over 80%. Parker was elected to represent Sitka in the upper house, which he did in 1882 and 1883 after the yearly upper house changes. In 1883 he lost his seat to fellow socialist Samuel B. Isherwood, and he owned a general store in Sitka himself. He died in 1913.